Need some tips for child portraits.

[ddeerreekk]

I'm having a small but paid photoshoot tomorrow with two of my young cousins. The girl is 7 and the boy is 5, and I'll be shooting individually as well as a few with them together.

Does anybody have some tips or good tutorials to help me out? I know general portraiture rules but nothing that is specialized towards kids, particularly photographing the two of them together.

Also, I have two lenses available to me, a 100mm macro or a 16-80mm zoom lens. My first thought was to go with the zoom, for versatility, however I have heard that macros can be good for portraits as well.

Thanks everybody! I'll post the pictures after the photoshoot (which is tomorrow - eek!!)

 

[musicaleCA]

I've heard on the grapevine that it's important to get down to their level, and make the shoot play time for them, not strictly a photo shoot. Kids don't have the emotional mastery that most adults do, so if you just tell them to smile, it's going to look forced. Try to get them to laugh and be happy naturally and good shots should come.

 

[ddeerreekk]

In terms of lighting set-up, how does this look? I had him quickly sit in to test the lights.. I'm pretty new to studio lighting, so bear with me.

Don't worry about the composition or anything like that.

http://tinypic.com/r/4hy2wy/5 (sorry, putting it directly in the post didn't seem to work).

I'm thinking it's a little too flat looking/lacking shadow?

 

[bigtwinky]

Get down to their level, the top down views don't work well (usually).

Let them be natural. Anything too posed will look very fake.

Depending on how excitable the children are, you may want to consider this like a sports shoot where shutter speed is important, and even using the built in servo / AF following mechanism.

If they are being difficult, getting them involved in the shoot can help, showing them pictures on the LCD, making things into a game, doing goofy things such as shadow puppets on a wall or what not